


Bender

by healingspells



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5x16, 5x17, 99 Problems, Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon Compliant, Depressing, Depression, Episode: s05e17 99 Problems, Gen, Intoxication, Introspection, Mild Sexual Content, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 04:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/healingspells/pseuds/healingspells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I found a liquor store"  "And?"  "And I drank it."  Takes place between episodes 5.16 and 5.17.</p>
<p>This is the act of giving up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bender

In hindsight, Castiel probably remembers a lot less of that night than he should.

 

Mostly he remembers sounds – the violent clinking of dropped wine bottles, the rush of blood in his ears as he pressed another after another dark bourbon to his lips – but there were visual images too. Blurry, bleary darkness, and stark contrasting neon lights. The city.  Strip clubs, probably --  but this was all surmised. These were images that should have made sense, but didn’t, much like most of his existence.  Now, Castiel, in the painful clarity of hungover reality, saw the light:  God never cared for him or his brothers.  The awakening was difficult; but then again, coming out of drunkenness never is.

 

The days before Castiel’s unanticipated bender was still clear in his head, unfortunately, untouched by the dozens of spirits he had shaken down his throat in an attempt to douse them out. The plan to infiltrate heaven, contact God, Dean Winchester’s call afterwards.  The looks on the brother’s faces as the explained: Yes, God knew about the struggles they had been having.  No , God wasn’t going to fight the losing battle.  And more than that, he doesn’t much care either.

 

_He doesn’t care._

 

That was the part that got deepest under his skin.  And Castiel could see himself raising his eyes to the heavens, anger - rage, even, like he had never felt before, bubbling up from some place deep in his faith, and manifesting somewhere in his vessel’s stomach. 

 

“You son of a bitch.”  He was angry, angry, so angry he could feel needle-like prickling on the tips of his fingers. “I believed in –“ The words stuck in his throat, refusing to come out.  Bile rose instead, as the phrase echoed back to him.

 

_He doesn’t care._

 

Apathy.  It wouldn’t matter if Castiel had screamed till his throat was dry.  God wasn’t listening to even this, the righteous anger of a faithful servant.

 

He tossed the useless charm to Dean and vanished. 

 

%%

 

Castiel appeared in an old gas station, instantly tripping over to a brown trash can around which flies were buzzing.  Pushing his head over the filthy receptacle, he emptied his stomach’s contents into the hanging black bag, coughing on the acid coating his mouth.  He brought his head up for a deep breath through his nose, then slammed his hands back down on either side of the opening, retching again.  When he was done, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and leaned, panting, against a pillar support at a pump. 

 

Castiel’s eyes swam in and out of darkness. His head swerved violently around, trying to orient his body.  The delicate vessel hadn’t been prepared for the emotional weight of an angel losing his faith, and was unable to cope with the emotions raging through the angel occupying him. Jimmy never had a strong stomach.

 

He gripped again the sticky pillar behind him, pressing his back forcefully to the white painted cement.  His vision was returning, and he stood there, breathing evenly through whatever holes could bring air to his suffocating lungs.  A wet, blank look passed over his face, eradicating the fear and rage there.  A buzzing sound in his ears started up, the sound of white noise, as if he had just stepped out of an explosion.  It morphed as he exhaled shakily through his raw throat.  Lapping in his ear, soothingly, insistently, an ocean was swaying.

 

A human came sprinting out of the gas station building, presumably a manager or cashier of the establishment.  Castiel didn’t hear much of what she was saying, but she kept pointing to a sign and waving her arms.  He watched her, staring intently at her face.  He was trying to hear her words, but they were like some made-up language, unintelligible or completely inaudible.  He squinted through his swimming eyes, trying to figure out what her voice should sound like, but she was getting smaller and smaller, receding down a tunnel and disappearing in the dark.  Suddenly, clearly, out of the noise –

 

“Keep walking, pal.”

 

So he did.  Castiel kept walking.

 

%%

He spent the next few days walking.  There must have been blisters like bloated welts on his vessel’s feet, but Castiel didn’t stop to rest them or care to heal them.  At one point it must have rained, as water soaked his feet and made them pruny.  The body began to shiver.  Feverish and blank-eyed, on the third day, Castiel tripped. He lay, his right cheek caked in mud for a while – a week, perhaps? – until a man picked him up out of the mud.  He rose easily in the direction his arm was being pulled, after he realized someone  _was_  pulling, looked the man directly in the eye, and vanished.

 

Castiel continued his walk after this, though the man seemed to have shaken him a bit, woken him from his walking slumber.  He walked, taking in his surroundings, through a couple of state lines, and veered into a large, brightly lit city. 

 

It was Friday night, and Castiel recognized this as a time for hedonistic celebration in modern American culture.  The lonely figure wandered through the slick, packed streets, taking in everything with wide eyes.  He walked solemnly through the heart of the city, staring up at the infinitely dark windows of skyscrapers reflecting back light from artificial lamps.  He looked up until he looked too far up, and then he kept his eyes to the swelling crowd around him.

 

When Castiel was in his vessel, the sky seemed so far away.

 

Castiel did not spend much of his time on earth walking through crowds of people.  As a result, there was a distinct lack of shock as the people seemed to part for him, unknowingly, sensing unconsciously the unnaturalness of his presence.  Stepping off the sidewalk, he floated directly in front of a moving vehicle.  A truck driver frothing at the mouth stuck a meaty fist out at him, looking comical. 

 

“Get out of the road, moron!”

 

Castiel turned his head. The man rolled up his window and went quiet. 

 

He glided by a long strip of restaurants and bars, a seemingly endless conglomeration of people who passed in and out of stores.  It was an absolute mess -- they groped each other, spat, had shouting matches with the cell phone users in the vicinity.  It was cacophonous, loud, unsettling. The street was split sharply in two – one side, which had a sidewalk and attractions, was overrun with people; the other lacked a sidewalk and was inhabited only by a few burnt out streetlights and a few sleeping homeless men. Castiel remained on the deserted other side of the street, observing the mess of people before him. 

 

“This is it.” he thought. These were the people he had given everything for. Chaos above and below.  Was this it, this poor display?  Castiel had always found humans somewhat…charming, since the latter half of the 19th century, at least.  But he’d never actually walked among them.  He had never eaten in their restaurants, sailed in their boats, or participated in their Friday night celebrations.  He always watched somewhat detachedly, looked on their daily lives the way one would observe the comings and goings of another’s pet.  The scene was foreign to him; he didn’t even know the creatures he had given everything to protect.  Staring at them now, he didn’t much like them, and he certainly didn’t fit in among them.

 

Thinking now, he didn’t even _want_ to fit in among them.  They reveled in iniquity, and Castiel was an angel.  Certainly, he shared their rebellion, but no matter what sins Castiel had committed, he had committed them with the belief that he was doing it for the sake of good.  These were uncleaned children, reveling in dirt and destruction.  And they were, of course, very small.

 

He had no place with them. But these also were children without a father.  And now, Castiel, the forgotten, found himself orphaned along with them.  For better or worse, they were lost together.  He had made his choice long ago.  He was on the side of the human race. 

 

The moon was starting to rise.  It reflected in the sheen of the blacktop. Castiel crossed the street.

 

The other side of the street was a circus.  People were running, stumbling, shouting, laughing, waving their hands, eating.  In the mess of people, Castiel was bumped.  He froze at the sudden contact.  He turned to find the offender, but he couldn’t determine who it was in the chaos behind him. The movement all around him was dizzying.  Every time he locked sights onto a person, they would move, hopping into a taxi or passing into a store.  His usual surly gaze would not be useful here; things moved too quickly.

 

As he started uneasily forward, he found that he could adapt.  He could lock sights with people for a couple of seconds each, taking them in, then hastily lock onto another group of people.  He watched as people walked in groups, talking and kissing. For a few seconds, he locked sights with a group that seemed to be sharing some illegal substances, then a group that was chomping on some Chinese food on a green bench.  He grew so accustomed to passing his focus around his line of vision that he nearly crashed into the table set out on the sidewalk in front of him.

 

“Hello, sir.  Have you accepted Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”

 

Castiel stared back.  A man with neatly combed salt-and-pepper hair stood behind the table, which was covered in a scrunched up white tablecloth.  There were pamphlets spread out across the table, a rounded glass donation jar, and a small wicker basket, on which the old man rested a wrinkled hand while he spoke.

 

“Ah, not the talker are you?  It’s okay, God accepts all those that repent as his children.  Even the mute ones.”  The man chuckled, deep and throaty, as if he had made a joke.  When Castiel still didn’t answer, he reached into the wicker basket, pulling out a string of white beads.

 

“Why don’t you take this.”  He cradled the beads in his hand, as if they were something precious. “It’s a rosary.  You use them to pray on.  That way, when you do come around, as I hope you will, you won’t be stuck praying without a proper nice set of beads.”  He held them out, dangling them from the tips of his fingers.

 

Castiel reached out for them slowly, too slowly to be a normal human reaction, hearing the plastic beads click together as he enveloped them in his hand. He lifted them up to his face and stared at them, crumpled and sad in the cup of his palms.  He looked up once more at the man, who had been watching in interest as Castiel regarded the rosary like an alien object, and left.

 

He was exiting the main square of the city when he passed by an alley, where a rustling caught the corner of his eye.  His shoes clacked quietly on the pavement as he stepped closer and leaned forward a bit to see what was happening. He furrowed his eyebrows at what he saw.

 

Two people were quickly becoming acquainted as lovers.  Castiel watched them, as they moved with each other in rhythm.  They were undressing quickly, unaware that they were being watched.  The sweating man was tangling his hands into the woman’s thick dark hair and they were swaying, pressing up against the slick brick wall. He felt a strange electricity in his blood as he watched, probably an unconscious deed on the part of his vessel, but made no move.  His breathing was speeding up, his fingers pressed deep into the beads of his rosary, leaving little red imprints on his fingers. Blood was rushing in his ears.  The angel’s head tilted involuntarily as he stared, trying to make sense of the encounter. He knew the base mechanics of what he was witnessing, but –

 

He stepped forward without meaning to.  This was ....not typical protocol, he realized.  He stepped back again, cheeks burning red in a relatively new feeling, embarrassment.  Lovers panting in each other’s arms, he moved on.

 

Castiel was on the outskirts of the city now, a silent ghoul on the side of the road.  He was suddenly very aware of his unique situation.  What could he do to relieve this alien ache deep in his stomach?  Angels did not have these problems, the problems of the faithless, because angels didn’t rebel. Castiel was alone in that.  So what did humans do?

 

Castiel had spent most of humanity’s existence believing that the humans were rash.  But it was the opposite – the humans had figured out long ago that their Father had left them, and in all that time they had been wiser than Castiel, they had figured out the perfect means of coping with such a loss.

 

Humankind would do what they do best, he decided.  They would do as they pleased.  They would sin. They would pack copious amounts of foodstuffs in their gossiping mouths, medicate their disease riddled livers, placate their alcohol-soaked kidneys.  They would engage in all sorts of lustful interactions - some of which were legal, none of which had pure intentions.  They would distract themselves with destruction.  The thought made Castiel recoil.  Perversity on the whole did not bother him – he’d been watching humans long enough that he’d seen it all.  But the thought of  _him_  reaching that low, grasping at petty pleasures made him grimace.

 

A third time, and this one hit him like a brick –

 

_He doesn’t care._

 

Castiel would do as he pleased. 

 

God wasn’t listening, so why should he be bound by rules which the Rulemaker Himself did not maintain?  A sickening leap in his throat accompanied his joy at the sudden freedom.  He decided he would partake in the next sinful opportunity to come his way.  It felt absurd – like he had come stumbling out of a madhouse.  Was he really going to stray like this, for no reason at all, other than the pleasure of his own flesh?  Like it had been called by Castiel’s own heart, a dark, glass-paned building appeared, staring out at the interstate.  Cas stumbled towards it, giddy.  What would it be?  Perhaps he could find someone selling drugs in the empty lot, or perhaps a prostitution ring was operating out of those hollow walls. There had to be something selfish he could do there.  Any number of sins could be hidden behind the impassive glass doors.  For the first time in almost two weeks, Castiel used his powers as an angel, teleporting into the building.

 

It was dark, but Castiel could tell it was a store from outlines of shapes, illuminated only by light cast in from the streetlamps. What a shame, if this place was really a very innocent little souvenir shop. The place was lined with shelves, ten neat isles slicing through the center of the fairly large building.  A cash register on a spanning counter space was placed squarely at the front of the store, near the doors, so that a cashier’s back would be to the door were he ringing something up.  Spotted linoleum paneling made Castiel’s shoes click as he glided through.  Where would he start?  He turned around in place, then approached a shelf.  It was too dark to identify anything till he stood, nose almost prodding the silhouettes of the products.  There was a dark turn in his stomach as he identified the obscure shape, and subsequently his whereabouts.  Liquor.

 

_Castiel was in a liquor store._

 

Something like twisted glee broke in his face as he grabbed a wine bottle from its wooden support.  He poured some of it into one of the little tumblers sitting by the cashier’s machine, as a trinket placed purposefully to lure another buy from the customers when checking out.  He sipped it down quickly and poured another, smacking his lips as he did so.

 

It tasted rough, burning, though that may have been the stomach acid, which Cas had never rinsed out of his mouth from the weeks before.  He finished off the rest of the bottle and placed the tumbler upside down beside the empty bottle. He licked around the opening of the bottle, thoughtfully.  Was he getting drunk yet?  Castiel waited, trying to decide.  He didn’t feel much different.  He was certainly still aware and in control of all his faculties.  And he could still remember everything. 

 

Castiel’s eyebrows furrowed.  It wasn’t working.  He was trying to feel his extremities tingling, like he was led to believe they would, but the only difference he felt was his stomach turning a little at the sudden occupancy after so many weeks of emptiness.  He squinted in the dim light and pulled another bottle off the shelf, uncapping it and pouring another helping.  Dean Winchester wouldn’t be taken down by a bottle of wine either.  Perhaps another bottle would push him over the edge, coax him into peace.  And besides, one bottle didn’t seem like such a sin.  He wanted drunkenness; he wanted intoxication; he wanted to be lost in blurry eyesight and stumbling steps.  Halfway through the third bottle, Castiel gave up on the tumbler, opting to pour the wine directly into his throat.  He tipped the wine into his mouth, the cool glass feeling chill against his lips. 

 

It didn’t take long for him to realize what was happening.  Without meaning to, his own presence, as an angel, was keeping his vessel from getting drunk.  His body was recognizing the alcohol as a poison and dispelling it before it could affect him. Cas felt a violent spike of rage. 

 

How could he be denied  _this_?  He had already lost everything. Here he was, broken and bleeding at the bottom of the Pit, with nowhere further left to drop.  And the one thing he had stuck to all this time, his goodness - his righteousness – the thing that had dropped him in the position he was in now – it was denying him his vice.   It was the final stab in a long series of small cuts.  It was a cruel joke.  It was unconscionable, the final insult!  He was being denied his  _failure_.

 

Castiel was no longer bothering to use a corkscrew to undo the fine wines, but instead plucking out the corks with two restless fingers.  He pulled another three bottles off the shelves and tipped them into his mouth, letting the last drops fall onto his tongue before ripping open the next one and gobbling it down.  It was frenzy, a point that had to be proven.  He couldn’t get the dark liquid down his throat quick enough to get to the next bottle.  Red wine trickled from the corners of his mouth as he chugged, eyes wide and unseeing.  Violently jerking two plastic vodka containers off a rack, he ripped into them as an animal, as a heathen.  He stumbled backwards into a rack once, the bottle of whiskey in his right hand breaking at his feet.  He didn’t look down, but stepped over the shards, grabbing two mini scotches from the wall opposite. In his lust, a glossy bottle of creamy chestnut liquid missed his mouth almost entirely, coating his neck and shirt collar, and getting stuck in the roughness of his chin.

 

Castiel had downed his thirteenth bottle of rum by the time he started to feel something.  It was a bubbling feeling, like a warmth spreading through his chest. And then –

 

_Hiccup._

 

Castiel stopped, startled. He let out his breath in a gust. This had never happened to him before. Smiling, he ran through a list of human conditions in his mind.  This one was harmless. He giggled into another hiccup.

 

He laughed loudly, the noise sounding foreign and strange coming from his mouth.  “Hah!” he yelped again, too loudly, and then he broke into a fit of wheezy chuckles which were emitted like a cadence through his lips.  

 

He was slowing down now, the warmth he had experienced earlier now mushrooming in his fingers and extending into his forearms.  A peaceful calm filled his head with soft white as he shuddered, coming to a halt.  He was breathing heavily, and his back was pressed to a faintly glowing refrigerator door.  He slid down against it, sinking to the sticky floor.  He laughed again suddenly, quickly, a small proud grin frozen on his face as his eyes glazed over.

 

Castiel’s heavy breathing subsided into a melancholy grumble.  He dashed a bottle open on a door handle and sipped it down from the jagged glass edges.  Finally crumpling, he sank, winded, on the floor.   Pressing one cheek to the cold linoleum and one hand to the cotton over his stomach, he groaned and burped.

 

There wasn’t much else Cas could remember after that.  He remembered the melting colors of headlights and taillights, as he sat on an overhanging sign on the interstate sipping a beer.  He remembered the quiet glowing windows of a residential neighborhood in Michigan, then the flashing strobe in some city of Europe.  But other than that, there was a dim hole where his memories should have been. The body which never sleeps swooned, drained and oblivious, at some point. He came to in Chicago, on the roof of a residential high rise, to the sound of a cell phone ringing.

 

Sam Winchester was calling him.  He grunted, placing a fumbling hand over his pocket.  He wasn’t proud to admit that his hand missed the pocket a couple of times. 

 

It rang out.

 

It would be a couple more hours before he realized that there was a voice message left for him on the cell phone, then another thirty minutes to figure out how to access said message.  It wasn’t easy, given the pounding headache resonating in the angel’s skull, or the fact that every time he stepped forward, he wobbled just a bit too far to the left, so that he lost his balance. 

 

Some time had passed before he realized that he had lost the rosary he had been given.  Another thing lost, another thing lost to Castiel.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I really loved writing this. Unbeta'd. Please tell me if you see any mistakes.


End file.
